Are we still cooking with gas?

Is gas still a cheap energy to use at home? Under what circumstances should you consider switching from gas to efficient electric appliances? These are some of the questions posed and answered in this new report on the use of gas for Australian households. The aim of the national report, funded by the Consumer Advocacy Panel, is to understand the impacts of anticipated retail gas prices on households and to identify cost-effective alternatives. The new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export market from eastern Australia is pushing up retail prices for domestic gas, a situation that is expected to worsen in coming years and make gas less affordable for many people. At the same time, improvements in the efficiency of some electric appliances, particularly for space heating and hot water, now make them cheaper to run than efficient gas appliances. Among the findings, the report concluded that it was not cost-effective to connect a new home to mains gas when efficient electric appliances were an option, while in existing homes the economics of switching from gas appliances to efficient electric was best in warmer states like South Australia, Queensland and parts of NSW. In Victoria, despite the State Government’s $100 million program to roll out the gas network in regional and rural areas, the report found homes would be better off with electricity and efficient electric appliances. This major report is the first detailed research that considers the impact of future gas price rises on residential households in Australia

THE INFLUENCE OF ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ON GROCERY SHOPPING BEHAVIOUR IN THE UK

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/741 on 28.02.2017 by CS (TIS)Consumption as an aspect of most people's lives in affluent societies is widely acknowledged as having become increasingly important (Newholm, 2005). We consume more, and consume more often, than previous generations (Durning, 1992) meaning the actions we make and the decisions we take have greater impact than ever before on the world we inhabit. For many their involvement with consumption goes beyond the act of purchase (Oilman, 1998) to include complex ethical dimensions. The relationship between ethics and social responsibility (E&SR) and consumption choices has received growing attention over recent years, resulting in the topic of 'sustainable consumption' becoming a central focus for national and international policy (Jackson, 2005). Yet a review of the pertinent literature in the fields of E&SR, consumer behaviour and shopping motives uncovers the limitations of existing E&SR research in relation to grocery shopping activities. What E&SR factors influence consumers' grocery shopping choice decisions and behaviour? How important are they when compared to traditional store image and product attribute criteria? How do attitudes influence E&SR grocery consumption? Who are the E&SR buyer types and how may they be differentiated and segmented? This thesis sets out to address these questions and comprises the results of, and reflections on, an investigation into grocery shopping behaviour in the South West of England. It consists of three stages: a literature review; a series of exploratory focus group interviews; and a confirmatory quantitative study. Content, factor, multiple regression and cluster analysis find: shopping motivations vary according to two facts I) the shopping consideration (store to patronise, product to purchase), and 2) the shopping occasion (main shop, top-up shop); differences occur in the importance of E&SR issues and traditional elements of store image/product attribute depending on the shopping activity; attitudes, perceived behavioural control and ethical obligation are linked to E&SR behaviour with differences in the importance of E&SR concerns meaning that E&SR shoppers are not a homogenous group. Results enable a preliminary typology of E&SR grocery shopping concerns to be derived and a range of E&SR consumer types to be proposed. This insight offers a far more complex market that has hitherto been recognised. Motivating E&SR behaviour is far from straight forward due to dissonance occurring in decision-making as consumers try to balance traditional retail aspects with their E&SR beliefs, so finding themselves 'locked in' to non-E&SR behaviours in spite of their best intentions. In these circumstances strategies are required to make it easy for consumers to behave in an E&SR manner: ensuring access to information that aids and encourages pro-E&SR behaviour, highlighting non-financial E&SR behaviours, and for Government to exemplify the desired changes through their own policies and practices

Exploring the intention-behaviour gap for tourists’ consumption of local food: A case of South East Queensland, Australia

Food tourism is a growing phenomenon with a particular emphasis on experiencing authentic and traditional local foods (Bessière, 1998; Cianflone & Cardile, 2014). The World Food Travel Association (2015) define food tourism as “the pursuit and enjoyment of unique and memorable food and drink experiences, both far and near.” While drivers and barriers to local food consumption have been well researched (e.g. Kemp, Insch, Holdsworth, & Knight, 2010; Megicks, Memery & Angell, 2012; Selfa & Qazi, 2005), motivations for tourists consuming local foods are less well understood (Kim & Eves, 2012). In this paper, the findings of an online survey of 546 visitors to South East Queensland Australia which sought to identify future and past visitors’ beliefs and attitudes toward local food and drivers and barriers to local food consumption is reported. While positive beliefs about purchasing local food are shared by both past and future visitors, in general, past visitors held less favourable attitudes toward local food and beverage than future visitors. The most important drivers for both past and future visitors for buying local food concerned the intrinsic qualities of the product itself including freshness and taste, with future visitors being more concerned about the health aspects of the product and being free from preservatives or chemicals. Support for local producers was also an important driver for both past and future visitors, however past visitors were more concerned about support for local retailers than were past visitors. Future visitors were more likely to agree that they would buy local food due to traceability, being traditional to the area, and interesting and novel. Past visitors were less likely than future visitors to agree that local food was good value for money, widely available, branded and easily recognizable as local or that local food could be trusted. While future visitors had high intention to purchase local foods, an intention-purchase gap is evident with past visitors purchasing less than anticipated, possibly due to perceived barriers associated with inadequate marketing and distribution, lack of information on where to find local food, lack of availability, expense and perceived inconvenience. Recommendations for local food producers and suppliers include improved marketing, branding and distribution

Local Food Purchasing: Balancing egoistic and altruistic motivations

Local food purchasing has been linked to egoistic motivations such as concern for health and safety, as well as altruistic motivations, such as concern for the environment and ethical consumption. Indeed, today’s more mindful consumers are changing their attitudes toward food consumption in an attempt to balance egoistic and altruistic motivations. This study investigates the relative importance of egoistic versus altruistic motivations in influencing attitudes toward, and purchase frequency of, local food. Findings reveal ethical self-identity, health consciousness and food safety are positively associated with favourable attitudes toward local food, propensity to buy local food, and interest in food traceability. Ethical self-identity and health consciousness influence purchase frequency, while food safety and environmental concerns do not

Exploring attitudes towards aquaculture development in the UK: A consultative stakeholder approach

This study explores attitudes towards aquaculture development as a way of providing a sustainable source of seafood through a consultative stakeholder approach. Given aquaculture is a less familiar concept within South West England, gaining insight of the views and perspectives of such a development in the region is required to facilitate stakeholder engagement. In-depth qualitative interviews investigate attitudes across five stakeholder sectors: government, fishing/marine, business/catering, tourism/leisure, environmental/charity. Findings show a mix of stakeholder attitudes, which differ by industry sector, from very negative to very positive. From this two segments are proposed (Commercially-Focused; Environmentally-Focused) to enable targeted communication and information dissemination strategies based on key areas of concern

Meaningful CSR Communication via Digital Media

It has regularly been stated that consumer demand for CSR is larger than ever, but do consumers really want to be informed about the ethical behaviour of brands? Does digital media have an impact on meaningful CSR communication? A research analysing consumer reaction to social media posts about CSR is limited. Using mixed method, this study examined the UK consumer attitudes towards CSR and its communication in digital media plus its consequent effect on purchasing intentions. Results indicate that consumers are more likely to evaluate a brand higher if made aware of CSR activity, which in turn affects purchase intention. Consumers have fairly positive attitudes about CSR communicated on digital media, but may react negatively if the message contradicts prior behaviour of the brand. Overall, the study show support for the communication of digital media but brands looking to enhance a damaged reputation must take great consideration over the message at hand

Generating Parametric BRDFs from Natural Language Descriptions

Artistic authoring of 3D environments is a laborious enterprise that also requires skilled content creators. There have been impressive improvements in using machine learning to address different aspects of generating 3D content, such as generating meshes, arranging geometry, synthesizing textures, etc. In this paper we develop a model to generate Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions (BRDFs) from descriptive textual prompts. BRDFs are four dimensional probability distributions that characterize the interaction of light with surface materials. They are either represented parametrically, or by tabulating the probability density associated with every pair of incident and outgoing angles. The former lends itself to artistic editing while the latter is used when measuring the appearance of real materials. Numerous works have focused on hypothesizing BRDF models from images of materials. We learn a mapping from textual descriptions of materials to parametric BRDFs. Our model is first trained using a semi-supervised approach before being tuned via an unsupervised scheme. Although our model is general, in this paper we specifically generate parameters for MDL materials, conditioned on natural language descriptions, within NVIDIA's Omniverse platform. This enables use cases such as real-time text prompts to change materials of objects in 3D environments such as "dull plastic" or "shiny iron". Since the output of our model is a parametric BRDF, rather than an image of the material, it may be used to render materials using any shape under arbitrarily specified viewing and lighting conditions

Conceptualising a Multi-level Integrative Model for Trust Repair

Trust in business is at an all-time low due to a continuous stream of high profile scandals and wrongdoings. Businesses affected by trust erosion must repair this trust to survive. Conceptualising a model for trust repair based on the integrative framework proposed by Bachmann et al. (2015), this paper suggests the inclusion of four moderating variables to aid selection, implementation and success of six key trust repair mechanisms. Moderating variables incorporated are: stakeholder attributes; type of trust relationship; cause of trust erosion; severity of trust erosion. In so doing, this paper contributes to understanding how the effectiveness of trust repair mechanisms can vary in different contexts, and the need to select appropriate trust repair mechanism(s) dependent on audience and source of trust erosion. Operationalising this model will benefit managers across a range of business sectors by signposting them to trust repair strategies fitting for their customers and situation